Marty, Steven:

It is of course feasible, in principle, to define many different profiles for OGSA. E.g., one could build one on WS-Transfer and friends, one could build one that uses a different construct than the WS-Addressing EPR to address things, one could define one that uses JINI mechanisms, one could define one that uses CORBA, one could define one that renames all of the current WSRF and WS-Notification calls to be slightly different (oh wait, that's the first in the list (-: ), etc.

Given the wide variety of possible alternative profiles, it would be helpful for those like me who are considering attending the BOF to know what more specifically what the goal of this work is going to be. The name doesn't provide any information, other than to imply, perhaps, that the interfaces on which the WSRF profile builds are not in some manner "minimal" and/or "simple." I.e., can you define the goals of the BOF more precisely other than "not WSRF"?

Regards -- Ian.

At 09:11 AM 6/21/2005 -0400, Marty Humphrey wrote:
Folks,

There have been a number of informal conversations lately about the
feasibility/value/implications of a possible non-WSRF-based profile for
OGSA.

To bring all interested parties together at the same time, a BOF has been
scheduled for Tuesday June 28 noon-1:30 (unfortunately at the same time as
the EGA session, but there were no good times available). The agenda is
still being finalized, but we expect to broadly discuss the pros/cons of
such an effort, and, if the BOF attendees decide that such an effort would
be valuable, produce a concrete plan for the formation of a Working Group.

Here is the information that Steven Newhouse provided for the GGF
organizers:

"A BOF meeting to discuss the creation of a WG to define an OGSA Basic
Profile that builds upon a minimal set of simple web services. The output of
the group would be a document, similar in nature to the OGSA WSRF Basic
Profile that would allow OGSA services to be rendered using an alternative
set of WS specifications."

I hope you can attend this (hopefully) productive and constructive session!

-- Marty and Steven

Marty Humphrey
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
University of Virginia

_______________________________________________________________
Ian Foster                    www.mcs.anl.gov/~foster
Math & Computer Science Div.  Dept of Computer Science
Argonne National Laboratory   The University of Chicago   
Argonne, IL 60439, U.S.A.     Chicago, IL 60637, U.S.A.
Tel: 630 252 4619             Fax: 630 252 1997
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